Talk:Václav Havel
A prime candidate for Category:People Born in Defunct Countries here. Since we're unlikely to get a slew of People Born in Czechoslovakia--though I guess Vaclav Jezek and some of his comrades might qualify--this would be as good a place as any to start putting people in unsorted. Turtle Fan 19:22, May 13, 2010 (UTC) :I'm hip. TR 19:54, May 13, 2010 (UTC) ::By the way, have we got an age on Jezek? Czechoslovak independence day was October 28, 1918, so he would have to have been a hair under 20 as of his first scene to qualify. Otherwise he was born in Austria-Hungary. Turtle Fan 20:19, May 13, 2010 (UTC) :::Youngish, but nothing precise. TR 21:24, May 13, 2010 (UTC) ::::-*sigh* Of course not. Turtle Fan 21:44, May 13, 2010 (UTC) You heard it here first, ladies and gentlemen! Turtle Fan 19:28, December 18, 2011 (UTC) :I'm weirded out by the fact that I just checked on Havel's status on Thursday or Friday. TR 02:15, December 19, 2011 (UTC) ::I had a somewhat comparable experience two or three years ago. I was in a bookstore and I stopped by one of those little kiosks for looking up books, and I put in the name Steve Alten, with whom I know you're familiar. I hadn't thought of him or his Meg series since I couldn't remember when, but as it turned out, earlier that very week his publisher had dropped the first new book in that series in five years. ::As for Havel himself, I'm sure news of his death was tucked away deep in the interior pages of my newspaper, though I usually don't even bother with the front page. Or maybe I would have seen it at the tail end of a nightly news broadcast, if I still watched those. Ironically, I switched to the Internet as my primary news source specifically so I wouldn't have to miss things like this getting buried in such a fashion. ::He does appear to have been a leader of consequence, anyway. He shepherded the Czech Republic through its post-Soviet transition, and now that country is, along with Poland, one of the few shining stars in former Warsaw Pact territory, where most governments muddled through the same period rather depressingly. Not knowing more about the Czech situation specifically, I'd assume you have to look to the top for that kind of exceptional performance. Turtle Fan 04:28, December 19, 2011 (UTC) According to Bing, Huffington Post is running an editorial contrasting "political opposites" Havel and Kim Jong-Il. Being KJI's opposite is good. I hope that means he had a stellar human rights record as opposed to simply not being a communist. Turtle Fan 20:20, December 19, 2011 (UTC) :By and large, yes, his human rights record is quite good. TR 21:10, December 19, 2011 (UTC) Candidate for deletion Based on our decisions in other cases (see the Akihito talk page and what we finally opted to do with the almost historicals in THoD), I am going to suggest we shuffle the ItPoME section over to the Minor Characters page as an unnamed character and delete Havel. I hate to do it, but the article runs counter to our de facto policy now. TR (talk) 18:02, July 8, 2016 (UTC) :This playwright is pretty blatantly meant to be Havel.JonathanMarkoff (talk) 05:45, July 9, 2016 (UTC) ::Charlie Lynton was pretty blatantly meant to be Tony Blair and Kurt Haldweim was pretty blatantly meant to be Kurt Waldheim. Obviously in the context of a story full of analogs, I'm not sure we should extend the presumption to Havel that he's he sole historical person to come to prominence in that TL. TR (talk) 15:08, July 9, 2016 (UTC) :::Probably should be moved to Minor Characters, possibly with a Lit. Comm. noting the similarities to Havel. This case actually makes more sense to have such a comment since it is an unnamed character rather than a Spoonerism or the use of middle names. ML4E (talk) 16:01, July 9, 2016 (UTC) ::::I also hate to see him go, but it's pretty clear he no longer belongs. Turtle Fan (talk) 23:48, July 9, 2016 (UTC)